Overview This article covers three balance design concepts. The application of these concepts is geared towards improving a game’s decision quality and variety. Balance and Fun Balance is an important part of the design effort as it ensures a number of compelling options are always made available to the player. Ideally, the player is always put in a position where they must weigh the consequences of their actio

Overview I want to go over some of my thoughts on symmetric and asymmetric design. I have come to conceptualize these two terms very differently than their traditional use would otherwise prescribe. Symmetric design seeks to create a system of consistency and relativity within a game. It is sometimes viewed a bit more narrowly, understood as simply applying mimicry within a game’s design. For example, it might

Overview The method discussed in Balancing Multiplayer Games – Intuition, Iteration and Numbers provides a framework that allow you as a designer to create a structure to measure and compare units relative to one another. This represents the first step towards achieving balance, as it creates a very clean baseline which allows you to measure and track a units performance relative to other units. This method has

Overview As games become far more complex, so does the task of balance. This article explores a number of methods used to obtain balance within complex games, concluding by offering some techniques to aid in the process. The Process of Balance During my time at Relic Entertainment, we have tested out a number of methods in our attempt to establish balance within our games. The first method is what I believe to be a v